With the April workshop looming close, Stuart and I needed a break from work and headed off for the afternoon. We wanted to pay our respects to one of the influences behind the weekend, so we took advantage of a rare break in the weather. It has rained a lot lately; many of the fields we passed were flooded and the river at our destination had overflowed, drowning the riverside pathways and marooning benches that would normally be filled with people.
We’re pretty lucky my local area… there are no rivers, just the springs and streams that arise in the chalk and meander through the Vale and we are far from the sea. Most of the time that seems a pity, as I love moving water and miss the waterfalls and waves, but with the recent persistent rain I can only be grateful.
Our little river is usually no more than a foot or two deep and seldom wider than a stream. It gave up trying to contain the influx of water a while ago and has expanded until it looks more like a lake. Riverside playgrounds and sports fields are all under water, roadside streams have escaped their confines and flooded the fields and driving is hazardous in places.
I lived beside a river in Vichy long ago and saw the power of water in flood. It is hard to imagine it, even from news footage, until you have seen and heard it for yourself. As with many things, real understanding comes only from direct experience. The water of the Sichon flowed into the more famous Allier half a mile from our home on the Rue Charlot. The Sichon was confined in a concrete channel about twenty feet wide and a set of vertical steps, rather like a ladder, led down about twelve feet from the little gate by the front door. The concrete extended to make wide banks creating a channel perhaps eighty feet wide.
While it was pleasant to watch the sparkling, fast flowing stream from the kitchen window, seeing the birds and wildlife that visited even its man-made banks. The concrete was ugly and I couldn’t understand the municipal mentality that had built this monstrosity to confine the river.
Until the first winter. Then I understood.
All one night there was noise… but in the blackness no way of telling what was causing it. Come morning, one look from the kitchen window solved the mystery. Huge branches battered the walls of the house as churning, mud-brown waves raced through the confines of the concrete channel. It was incredible to watch. It got worse, hour by hour, as I saw the waters rise to within an inch of the kitchen windowsill.
What could be moved was taken upstairs, along with supplies… there was such elemental force in the floodwaters and they rose with such speed and volume. There was no question of what would have happened to anyone or anything caught in their path or in the debris they carried. Somewhere in one of the boxes of photographs I still have a picture taken through that window, but it is not as vivid as the one in my mind that hears the noise, smells the water or remembers the rising fear.
I have been lucky, seeing this so close yet merely as an observer and not as a victim of the extremes of the elements. It was a place where evidence of the uncompromising power of nature was always close. Vichy, for all its elegance as a once fashionable spa town, lies in a region of volcanoes. Indeed they are the source of its famous thermal springs and the volcanoes of the region are only dormant, not extinct. The heat in summer can be intense and the thunder storms regular and spectacular. I have swum in a lake in an old crater, smelt the sulphur from the vents in the caves of the Puy-de-Dôme, and seen the remnants of the effects of previous eruptions. You know the earth in charge, not man, even in this seemingly gentle and beautiful landscape.
Taking pictures of the local flooding that here, at least, is little more than an inconvenience, so minor in comparison to that experienced by many, I was reminded how close we live to the awesome power of Nature, even within our regulated cities. We try our best to tame her, and our industries cause such destruction and yet, even if we make our planet uninhabitable for our species and many others, we are only destroying ourselves.
We tend to forget that we ourselves are just a very small part of Nature… a mere drop in a vast and moving flow of life that wears an infinite variety of forms. The elements of earth make up our bodies and her tides and seasons are echoed within us as they flow through our veins and hearts.
In a million years… a mere heartbeat for the life of the world… what will remain of us? Very little, perhaps, but life will continue whether we would recognise its forms or not. Even the shallow flooding in the fields serves to remind me how small we are in comparison to Nature. She is older than we by far. We, with our little lives may come and go, but she remains.
The Silent Eye 
Thank you 🙂
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Reblogged this on Sun in Gemini.
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Reblogged this on anita dawes and jaye marie.
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Thanks, Jaye x
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Beautifully written, Sue – as is your wont! As I’ve said in my own blog, we and nature are simply aspects of a single entity – what one does has its inevitable reverberations on the other. I’m sure the extreme weather conditions we are seeing now in so many parts of the world are nature’s response to our own ever-increasing mind-driven arrogance and lack of true humility.
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The earth has her own life…we only think we are able to control her, but the balance will be redressed eventually. We forget at our peril that we are part of that greater life and as utterly dependant upon it as a babe in the womb upon its mother.
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You are right you can’t appreciate it until you’ve experienced it. We did several times when we were on the boat, losing the river banks behind us, our marina basin becoming part of the river itself. Our pontoons were flood protected, and thus rose with the water level, but a few years before our arrival, those up river were less fortunate and their boats were abandoned in trees and fields when the water receded.
Now we are close to the sea and can hear the roar of the water. We have flood defences here and so far the waters have come close, but not breached. With the recent rain, the lake in the park has filled to almost overflowing, and the pathways support their own mini lakes as the puddles thereon are quite deep.
If nothing else, the photos taken on our walks has made us respect the power of the sea and weather. .
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Water, and the emotion it is used to symbolise, is such a powerful force. Even the smallest drip can erode a boulder over time… and we do forget that until we have experienced its power for ourselves.
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The River Nith floods in Dumfries several times a year. There’s talk about building a flood defence but it will lead to the river flooding further downstream.
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That is always the problem with flood defences… it is just shifting the weak spot.
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Reblogged this on Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life and commented:
Sue Vincent share some photos of the recent flooding and it prompted her to share her experiences with potential life threatening deluge when she lived in Vichy. She reminds us that we are here at the discretion of the earth and all its magnificent and sometimes violent outbursts from rain to earthquakes. As always another brilliant post on The Silent Eye #recommended
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Thanks, Sally xx
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Gorgeous piece Sue, despite that havoc such occurrences can wreak on us. The world is certainly changing weather everywhere! Such true words Sue – “You know the earth is in charge, not man, ” ❤
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Thanks, Debby. She will always have the last word, I believe. ❤
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❤
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You paint such vivid pictures with your words, Sue. 🙂
I lived through a flood once when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I don’t like water and understand it’s power.
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I love water, but respect it. That was the closest I got, though, to feeling it. The water was so high that somewhere there is a picture of my husband sitting on the cooker, fishing out the kithen window…though what he hoped to catch in that raging torrent I do not know! 🙂
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Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
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Thank you, Michael 🙂
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Always. 🙂
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🙂
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Water is immensely powerful! I’ve been in a couple floods, Sue, but none so high or inconvenient as the one you describe. Nature is indeed a force beyond our control. And as scary as that can be at times, I love the idea that there is one thing we haven’t completely mastered in our day to day lives. 🙂
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I agree with you, Diana. I think we need to know there is something more powerful than humankind. 🙂
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It’s comforting in a weird way to know we have limits.
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I think so too. We are arrogant enough as a species without the encouragement of thinking ourselves all-powerful.
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Reblogged this on Stuart France.
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Mother Nature has far more power than most people realize. As you said, living it is the only way to truly understand. Humbling, to say the least. We really are just a grain of sand in a moment of time. Excellent post, Sue.
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Thank you, Jennie. We know the truth, but prefer not to see it… like the dwarves in the stable when Narnia ends.
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Exactly!
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